Welcome to the website of Absolute Pandemonium - Homerton College's very own Steel Pan band!

Who are 'Absolute Pandemonium'?

Absolute Pandemonium is Homerton College's Steel Pan band. The band was first established in 1982 in the Department of Music, then based in Trumpington House. Going from strength to strength, Absolute Pandemonium has been running for almost 30 years, and always welcomes new members. The band is now based at Homerton College and rehearsals take place there. It is also now part of the Homerton College Music Society and frequently feature in many of their concerts and events.

Absolute Pandemonium is also available to perform at other events: charity events, weddings, school fairs, staff parties to name a few. Absolute Pandemonium also perform at many of the university events, such as May Balls, June Events, Garden parties and other society's social functions.

Absolute Pandemonium is in constant demand for performances and curriculum based workshops at schools to bring both music and culture to students and children. We have also held weekend workshops for local Brownie groups and performed at Teacher conferences to explain more about the work we do as well as how we feel music is beneficial to education.

What are steel pans?

Steel Pans (also known as Steel Drums) are pitched percussion instruments (i.e. different notes can be played on them). They originated from Trinidad and Tobago, and are often made from empty oil drums. They originated from tuned bamboo sticks, which were hit against the ground. This eventually evolved into the modern steel drum as we know it.
The ‘face’ of each drum is separated into various segments, and each segment is tuned to a different note. In our band we have 4 different types of steel pans; tenor (for the main tune), guitars and cellos (for the accompanying chords and harmonies) and the bass drums (for the bass line). Steel pan musicians are known as Pannists.

What sort of music do we play?

We play all sorts of styles of music, ranging from traditional Caribbean style tunes, to modern day pop music and show tunes, for example, “Under the Sea” from the Little Mermaid, “Take on Me” by A-Ha, “In the Mood” by Glen Miller and “Hava Nagila”. We are always open to new ideas for tunes to play, and write our all own arrangements.

Events

We have performed at many university events:

(as well as many workshops for schools, Brownie groups and local town events)

HCMS Lent Concert 2016

Cambridge Chinese Students and Scholars Association Chinese New Year Gala 2016